I really love it when the to-do list includes those things that I really like to do. It’s Monday night, and M’s playing basketball, E’s supposed to be sleeping but is sneaking (kah-thumping) out of bed every five minutes to get another book, and I have the whole house to myself in relative quiet. I finished quite a few things over the weekend, and put in nearly ten hours at work today (let’s not make a habit of that) so the evening is truly mine, and I’ll do as I please.
Midway down the list is “design Christmas card”. This is truly one of the things that I enjoy most about the season. I love the whole process of card making – coming up with the idea, and then implementing it in a very rigorous, mass production kind of way. I line the supplies up in neat little piles, I assemble the tools that I will need, and I start making piece after piece, then layering these pieces into the final, then sliding each finished product into its envelope and sending each on its way. I like taking the whole mess of them – nearly one hundred in all – to the drop box at the post office around the corner, sliding them into the slot a dozen or so at a time. It is my favorite way to send a teeny little gift in the mail, a ritual that has become a source of great happiness for me and an outlet for the creativity that is so easily pushed aside during the busiest of seasons.
Having a daughter makes the process even more interesting – figuring how to work her into the card itself, or like last year, using her design thoughts as a springboard and putting those little fingers to work with scissors, beads and twine. This year will be no different…the wheels are turning, and now I’m off to curl up with a sketch book to get these things down on paper.
